James Whitbrook: "When Star Wars released in 1977, the face of science fiction in popular culture was changed forever — but a year later, the movie helped transform the toy industry as well. Since then, Star Wars and the toys it inspired have been forever linked, a story that can just as easily be told through figures as it can the films."

Chris Kohler: "Nintendo's Amiibo, its entry into the "toys-to-life" gaming accessory business that also includes Activision's Skylanders and Disney's Infinity, seems to be off to a fairly good start. But it could have been much better."

Beth Rogozinski: "The mystical magical fountain of youth was a place where if you drank the waters – the old would become young again. While we are still searching for these waters for us mere humans – certain entertainment properties have unlocked the source: adaptation, modernization and transmediation."

Chris Kohler: "If you're at all familiar with the success of Skylanders, you won't be too surprised by Disney's latest gaming initiative."

The Digital Rocking Chair's insight:

It's called Infinity and, if Skylanders is anything to go by, we're going to be hearing a lot about it in the next few months. Must say, I don't mind ... it looks pretty cool. It combines characters from multiple Disney storyworlds into a single game with the potential to mix and match them in levels of your own creation. John Lasseter has described it as “a tool chest for creativity".

Today, Lego announced a new line aimed square at girls: Lego Friends. These sets include pretty, feminine figures that are more articulated than classic Lego minifigs, blocks in a palette of colors including pink and purple, and sets like bakeries and dog shows...

Scott Schube was watching his two older children create characters in online games a few years ago when he wondered if there was a way to bring the designs to life. "They spend half their time creating characters,...

In what could be the ultimate twist on Toy Story, Henry Jenkins suggests that action figures -- those Star Wars and Masters of the Universe dolls from a few decades ago -- had the power to spark human creativity and transcend their original function.

While at least two of us at Kotaku enjoy Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure enough to recommend a purchase, that doesn't mean we're oblivious to the costly downsides to a game that sells its downloadable content on toy store shelves.

LEGO did a great job of activating two profound assets in their transmedia efforts: 1) a product that was itself essentially about nontraditional storytelling and 2) a highly psychologically-invested customer base who had linked their own stories with LEGO over a lifespan of play.

Sam Thielman: "What looks like an entertainment company, spends like an entertainment company and programs like an entertainment company? It's Hasbro, a toymaker. Hasbro makes not just toys but also hugely popular intellectual property, which for decades has been key to its bottom line."

Jordan England-Nelson: "Rather than rely on popular films to generate buzz for new products, toy companies are creating in-house studios to produce their own video content to get kids excited about new toy lines."

Omar Kattan: "Lego understood very early on that they’re not in the toy business, but instead, the imagination business. As a result of this, Lego brought their bricks to life through the magical power of story told through multiple platforms."

Barbie is just shy of 53 years old. She’s survived the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, both wars with Iraq and has managed to outlast 10 U.S. Presidents. But she might have just met her match with two cancer survivors.

This article is amazing. It shows something so deeply ingrained into our modern brains, that we have never actually stopped to think about it. Why is pink so strongly associated with girls and women? And why is just about everything else, especially blue, associated with boys? Why can't girls have blue? In regards to this, a store called Hamleys has decided to remove signs saying "Boys" and "Girls." Not only that, they have also abandoned the "color coding" of blue and pink. This is amazing because such a small change can actually have huge impacts, such as making people realize that they were unconsciously obeying the "color coding" and segregation of sexes.

After concentrating on the boys market for the last five or six years, our favorite manufacturer of plastic building blocks is trying to capture the other 50 percent of the kids market with Lego Friends, a new line aimed at girls aged 5 and above...

More than half of all children in the UK own a physical toy based on free-to-play and subscription-based virtual worlds and games like Club Penguin or Mind Candy's Moshi Monsters, according to a new study by Dubit Research.

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